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Women In Wellness: Debbie Rosas of Nia on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Live skin to skin. Being touched by the world and touching the world in return is our most intimate and pervasive sense. The skin is our largest organ and is constantly touching and being touched. But connecting that to pleasure, we can experience deep wellness throughout our body and inner being. My feet are the hands that touch the earth, and have 7,000 nerve endings. When those nerves can receive sensation from the ground up, we can feel the pulse of the world around us resonate within. Sense the fabric on your body, touch the bark of the tree you walk past, embrace the water that you swim in. These are amazing experiences when done intentionally.

As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Debbie Rosas.

Debbie Rosas is the founder and co-creator of the Nia® Technique. Dedicated lifelong to self-healing and self-mastery, Debbie has been a pioneer in the body-mind fitness industry since 1976. Credited with establishing the mind-body fitness category, she is a leading fitness innovator, teacher, author, choreographer, performer, healer and artist whose work greatly influences the lives of thousands worldwide. After nearly 40 years, Debbie continues to offer classes, workshops and trainings online and in-person around the world.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

It’s interesting, because I feel like people today know me as someone who cherishes the body and mind connection. For quite some time now, I’ve been heavily involved in the fitness/wellness community, and my passion has been to help people uncover and understand the relationship between and within their internal selves and the external world around them.

But I wasn’t always Debbie Rosas, founder of Nia — once upon a time, I was disconnected from and unaware of the beautiful relationship that could exist between my mind and body. I grew up with multiple learning disabilities and somatosensory illnesses — I struggled with hearing and seeing, reading and directionality, and my body didn’t feel like a safe place for me to be within. I experienced a deep lack of confidence when it came to both my internal self and my external relationship with the world around me.

As I grew older, I began to dive deeper within my body and speak to it. I started to uncover my inner Voice, a way for me to communicate not only with my physical self but also with my spirit and soul. That was when I began to feel a true sense of safety from within.

From that point on, I began to approach life as an artist, bringing with me a deep curiosity not only of the world around me, but also of the incredible being that was me — my body, my mind, my soul and my spirit.

As a stay-at-home mother, I had a nagging feeling that I needed to do something. I began by becoming a commercial artist. After I had my second child, I experienced a deep depression. At the time, postpartum depression wasn’t a term people used or understood, so I wasn’t able to label these feelings, but I knew within me that there was something incredibly off balance. Near my house, there was a gym for women. One day, I decided to try it out, see if losing weight and feeling better about my appearance would make me feel better about my internal self, too.

Something incredible happened that day. After doing a quick exercise, I stepped off the machine, and felt as though an emotional weight had been lifted from me. I was perplexed — how could I move my leg, and feel something else, deep inside? A short while later, a friend brought me to an aerobics class. Once again, I felt the same sensational transformation within my spirit.

Walking out of that class, that same Voice within me that had guided me all my life said, “You’re going to create a movement program that uses the body. No machines — make a program of what you know.” And that’s what I did — I created my first fitness program, called the Bod Squad. Not only did we offer aerobics, but we also included a focus on awareness and meditation and offered education about health, wellness and diet. This wasn’t common at the time, and I knew we were onto something, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.

A few years went by, and I wanted to find a way to honor and celebrate the growth our students were showing. A martial artist invited me to his dojo to learn about the belt ranking system. When I took my shoes off, I found the missing piece to what I had been trying to accomplish at Bod Squad. I thought to myself, “How have I been teaching people to move without sensation? How have I been telling people to move the body, but not sense the body?”

That’s when I set out to create something new — Nia. While the name comes from Non Impact Aerobics, the program is so much more. Nia helps people uncover the sensation of feeling connected to themselves, which is something many people don’t even realize they’re missing. We offer people the opportunity to look within and become the conscious leader of their own body and life.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

With Nia’s creation came the never-ending question — can you get a cardiovascular workout without jumping up and down? While I certainly knew the answer was a resounding yes, I knew that we had to dig deeper to defend the brand we had worked so hard to build. So, we invited a doctor from St. Francis Sports Medicine Clinic to come and run a test: could Nia as a program provide cardiovascular conditioning?

The results were clear — not only could Nia offer cardiovascular conditioning, but the program had a number of other incredible benefits. We could prevent many of the muscular injuries that occured during traditional, high-impact aerobics, and people of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels could take part at their own individual paces and intensities.

The main takeaway for me, though, was something much deeper. After hearing a scientist say all these proven benefits of Nia, I felt an immense wave of confidence, and I realized I had to validate every single piece of the Nia process. I had to find specific answers to each step: why was participating barefoot important? Why did we encourage people to ebb and flow out of different levels? Why did we practice on three planes of the body? I began looking more intentionally at the form and function of the human body, rather than just what made me feel good. And by using the science of the human body as a litmus test, paired with the innate focus on our inner minds and wellness, we’ve been able to turn Nia into something incredible.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

My biggest mistake was thinking everyone would immediately see the same extraordinary benefits of Nia that I do. When I realized that you could get fit without punishing yourself, I imagined everyone else would immediately leap at the opportunity as well. That’s not what happened, though. Early on, I remember explaining to someone the incredible experience behind Nia — that we were getting people to move with pleasure. That person immediately responded, “People don’t care about pleasure when they’re exercising — they need to feel the pain to know it’s working.” That’s when I realized that I had to change an entire thought consciousness within our society, and show people that “No pain, no gain” isn’t the only possible mentality when it comes to getting fit.

Now, I’ve realized that people will come to Nia when the time is right for them. And once they arrive, they’ll experience the sensation of working in a relationship with their body, rather than forcing it into an uncomfortable position or tension.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Ultimately, Nia isn’t just about “fitness.” Instead, our program is designed to help people find healing and comfort within themselves. We work with a lot of people living with short and long term illnesses. Often, when people are diagnosed with something like cancer or Parkinson’s, they feel disempowered, like there’s no solutions or actions they can take upon themselves to better their lives. But making decisions about your own movement and truly listening to your body are things that anyone can do, even when dealing with a horrific prognosis. It makes me proud that these people can come to Nia and experience agency in their own bodies. I think it has an incredible impact both on them and their loved ones.

The same is true with mental burdens. Especially amidst the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a large number of people dealing with depression and stress. Through our Zoom and on-demand classes, we were able to give people the opportunity to bring their emotional spirit to the dancefloor and relieve their bodies, minds and spirits of some of the tension they were carrying.

We had been offering online classes before the pandemic, but the past few years have been the times where we’ve really seen the impact that our Zoom classes can have. Taking part in the Nia experience within your own home is freeing in it’s own way. We realized that when people are in front of others in person, there can be a bit of “stage fright.” But when they’re in their own space, people are able to move like nobody’s watching. They can use their own voice and feel less inhibition.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

  1. Live skin to skin. Being touched by the world and touching the world in return is our most intimate and pervasive sense. The skin is our largest organ and is constantly touching and being touched. But connecting that to pleasure, we can experience deep wellness throughout our body and inner being. My feet are the hands that touch the earth, and have 7,000 nerve endings. When those nerves can receive sensation from the ground up, we can feel the pulse of the world around us resonate within. Sense the fabric on your body, touch the bark of the tree you walk past, embrace the water that you swim in. These are amazing experiences when done intentionally.
  2. Use your voice. Especially if you’re living alone or working in a home office, you may not be exercising the tongue and the mouth much. Keep them coordinated by speaking out loud. Read a book out loud, talk to a news anchor and exhale, using your loud breath. Blending your body and breath can grow your connection to your inner Voice and align you from the inside out.
  3. Activate the mindset of RAW. — The practice of RAW (Relaxed body, Alert mind, Waiting) infuses the body with the listening sensation. Particularly in times with stress in our relationships, RAW can help us listen and allow others to find their own engagement without us feeling pressure to fix or change them.
  4. Feed the body with five sensations:
  • Flexibility. Experience the sensation of energy moving out and along your bones. Lengthen yourself through the crown of your head and give the body what it wants — volume and space.
  • Strength. We use strength in everything we do. Packing energy in your bones and squeezing to align yourself allows us to execute movements with ease and grace. This is an art — it’s finding the perfect balance between squeeze and release to create a comfortable awareness and tension within our bodies.
  • Mobility. Mobility is the sensation of energy and constant motion. These sensations are happening within our body — our lungs are intaking air, our hearts are pumping our blood, our stomachs are creating energy from the food we eat. By becoming more aware of our inner mobility, we can become one with our bodies and souls.
  • Agility. Agility is the starting and stopping of our movement. Our breathing starts and stops, our mind starts and stops as we move from one topic to another. We use our agility when we drive a car, or when we move across the room.
  • Stability. When we bring these senses into a workout or everyday activity, we have to have stability. Your life and wellbeing relies on your stability and inner balance. And, when you enter into a workout, your body must stay in a place of resting, readiness and action. We need support from underneath and behind us. Balancing the stimulation that our body experiences allows us to stay healthy and well.

5. Return to the body’s playground. When learning to walk, every able-bodied human goes through five key movements to stand up and walk. By returning to these stages, we can experience inner healing and begin to redevelop our flexibility, strength, mobility, agility and stability in just minutes.

  • Embryonic. With your spine on the floor, move like a fish in water. Toss and turn, move from your back to your belly and twist your spine. When we’re on the ground, our body knows we can’t fall, so we experience higher levels of relaxation and relief.
  • Creeping. Rest on the floor belly down and begin to move in a lizard-like pattern. Allow the left and right sides of your body to begin organizing themselves into cohesive units.
  • Squatting. The squatting portion of this stage can be difficult for some adults, but with time and practice you can regain your inner child’s strength. Enter into a squatting position, similar to a monkey. Feel the parts of your body that have lost resiliency. Shift your body weight and begin reclaiming the flexibility you once held in your hips and legs.
  • Standing. Press your feet down into the ground and stand. You’ll experience a blast of inspiration that comes from this sense of balance between gravity and electricity. You’ve freed and aligned the energy systems that go into your body, and can now engage with the world around you in a more thoughtful, balanced way.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

  • Trust your gut. Some people call it your second brain, I call it your first.
  • Follow your heart. We’re always guided by meaning and purpose. We should ask ourselves, “How did I end up here? Why am I doing this?”
  • Don’t settle for the status quo. Daily, feed your body with new information. Always think: “What else?” Curiosity is one of our greatest gifts.
  • Observe the path you’re on. Check the choices and decisions you’re making against their intentions. If my purpose is to inspire people to feel and heal, then I need to ask myself if that intention was accomplished after every workout or piece of writing.
  • See everyone in life as unique and sacred. Rather than thinking you have to compete with someone, recognize and welcome the difference between you and them.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

I’m incredibly passionate about sustainability of the human heart and the conscious being. I believe that we have lost sight of what it means to be a conscious human: of what it means to be conscious and compassionate. One of our biggest abilities for connection is through our bodies, and yet so many people are unwilling to look each other in the eyes or touch and connect. I hear often that people feel as though they have to protect themselves, but that is how we lose connection with each other. We all have that inner child inside of us. I think it’s incredibly important that we all cherish and nurture that inner child with the space and opportunity to connect. If we don’t start waking up and understanding that we need to touch and connect, we will face the loss of a part of the collective human heart that we won’t be able to get back.

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

To keep up with Debbie and all things Nia visit,

Website: https://nianow.com/

Nia TV: https://www.niatv.fit/

Instagram: @niatechnique

Twitter: @niatechnique

Facebook: @NiaTechnique

YouTube: @NiaTechnique

Thank you for these fantastic insights!

Women In Wellness: Debbie Rosas of Nia on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.